


Amiable Eccentricity

by MinervaFan



Category: Death on the Nile - Fandom
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-09
Updated: 2004-12-09
Packaged: 2020-03-01 04:26:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18792958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MinervaFan/pseuds/MinervaFan
Summary: There's a fine line between amiable eccentricity and outright rudeness.  And there's a fine line between love and hate.





	Amiable Eccentricity

Title: Amiable Eccentricity  
Author: [](https://minerva-fan.livejournal.com/profile)[**minerva_fan**](https://minerva-fan.livejournal.com/)  
Fandom: Death on the Nile  
Rating: hard R  
Pairing: Mrs. Van Schuyler/Miss Bowers  
Summary: There's a fine line between amiable eccentricity and outright rudeness. And there's a fine line between love and hate.  
A/N: Written as a Christmas Giftfic for [](https://walpurgis01.livejournal.com/profile)[**walpurgis01**](https://walpurgis01.livejournal.com/)

  
She has taken more care than usual in preparing for the massage. Rose water misted onto the sheets and herbs tossed into the fire add a warming scent to the air. Soft music on the phonograph, a Schubert Mrs. Van Schuyler has always shown a preference for, covers the sounds that barely make it from the street into the house.

It is odd how dramatic events can lend a more important air to the simplest of things. A massage, for instance, to fight the onset of rheumatism in an aging wealthy woman. Bowers considers it at best a tedious chore, at worst an insult to her lineage. She curses her luck, her awful choice in fathers. A family in ruin, a fortune lost, and Bowers a common servant to a fussy old crow.

Death on the Nile. That's what the papers called it. Five deaths, four murders and one suicide, occur within 24 hours on a boat filled with wealthy tourists. Scandal. Mrs. Van Schuyler has reveled in it, on the surface at least.

Bowers looks up at the enormous painting over the fireplace, the stunning woman in her mid-20s gazing over the room like a Queen overlooking the troops. This is the sort of thing that the young Van Schuyler bride lived for, from the moment she stole one of the richest bachelors in London right out from under the nose of her rivals up to the day she hired the odd daughter of that disgraced Lord Bowers to be her servant and companion.

The old coot is a glutton for controversy; she eats it with the same relish as her Sunday pudding. But her muscles couldn't lie. She twitches at the slightest sound, smiling too broadly and standing too closely for Bowers not to recognize that she, too, is having dreams.

Dreams of gunshots, of blood and rivers and screams.

Bowers dreams too, despite her reduced state.

The fire sparks loudly, sending a thrill of the unexpected through the tall woman. She is not so much homely as hard, favoring masculine styles and unsentimental ways over the fashions of her more feminine acquaintances. She wears her hair bobbed, severely, around her extraordinary cheekbones. Her boyish figure is enhanced more than hidden by the tailored suits she wears. Perhaps this is why Van Schuyler keeps her on--all the benefits of a man without the cost.

She doubts her employer ever cared for men, even her own husband, or the several husbands of other women she borrowed over the following years. Bowers doesn't blame her. Men are good for cards and getting past certain outdated restrictions, but she certainly wouldn't ever take one seriously. Not, Bowers reflects as she turns the sheet on the chaise down to expose it to the heat of the fire, not when there is an Irene ready at the Pavillion, with her large hands and soft smile, or a Marta finally back from Budapest, so sweet and naïve, and with such reasonable rates. Men seem redundant in the face of such opportunity.

Mrs. Van Schuyler comes into the room in a flurry of excitement at something she read in the paper. She is all mouth and eyes, that one, with her lust for scandal and gossip and wealth. Bowers should hate her, but she doesn't. Not really, aside from ambient resentment at the entire situation life has thrust upon her.

"Quick now, before it gets cold," she scolds the old bat as she hurries her into the warmed sheets. The woman shuffles in, dropping her robe on the floor, her nude body reflected in the firelight. Bowers, as always, casts an appraising gaze at her employer. No bruises, no sores. None of those little things that seem to plague the elderly in the night, those sneaky little traumas that come from nowhere to attack the frail and the weak.

Oh, but there's no frailty about Van Schuyler. She's atwitter at some MPs arraignment, calling the man a thief and a liar and maligning his family all the way back to William the Conqueror. Bowers listens more or less politely as she begins to rub the liniment into Mrs. Van Schuyler's shoulders. It smells of medicine, a nasty scent she could do without but which has unfortunately become a part of her life. The bat insists on continuing her diatribe against Lord Something or Another, despite the fact that Bowers' vigorous massage has pushed her face partially into the cushion to muffle the sound.

Bowers is wondering if she should go out tonight. It's been a terrible month, heat and heathen and murders and a host of unpleasant people to deal with, the least of whom being her own employer. She is tense and tired, and the comfort of a friend might be helpful in reducing her ennui. Gillian is in town, always ready to trade a night of fun for the few social connections Bowers still has.

But she finds she cannot seriously think of going out. She is worried by the knots in her employer's shoulders, the distressed moans in the cushion at the slightest touch. Van Schuyler has quieted now, eyes closed as she relaxes into the massage. In her face, Bowers searches for that young beauty who broke hearts and destroyed lives.

She has stared at that woman in the painting often, thanking whatever deities protected the likes of her that she was born forty years too late.

Young Van Schuyler could have destroyed her with a smile.

Young Van Schuyler could have twisted her heart around a finger, stretching it into toffee candy and eating it as a lark.

Her hand closes too harshly on a shoulder, and Mrs. Van Schuyler cries out a soft curse. Bowers mumbles an apology, stroking her hands down the older woman's back onto her soft backside. There is no complaint. She has done this often enough.

Fire me, she thinks at the body wriggling under her hands. Fire me and send me away. Set me out into the streets, she prays as she gently massages thighs, once tight and firm, now soft with age and lack of use. She spreads them gently, finding that spot she knows so well, stroking with practice grace. Disgrace me, send me away from you, she begs as she pours herself into the touch, hating the love she feels for this nasty old cow.

She stops, and Mrs. Van Schuyler makes a soft whimper of protest. Quickly, Bowers removes her shirt and trousers, leaving her undergarments in place as she lies down behind the older woman, wrapping arms about her in a protective gesture, rocking the one-time beauty slowly as they relax together.

Images of blood. Bullets and hatred and blood, swimming in the Nile.

She closes her eyes against the thoughts, and holds Mrs. Van Schuyler for a moment. They have no one else, these two. No family to mourn their deaths. No friends really, just acquaintances to tsk over their death and speculate as to the distribution of their worldly effects.

Bowers kisses her employer's hair softly as she strokes her stomach, eyes closed still as she listens for the sounds of the older woman's health. How is her breathing? Is it steady? Labored? Shallow? She cups a breast, no longer firm but still heavy and soft, and plays the nipple erect with the flat of her thumb.

Mrs. Van Schuyler never touches her this way. It was agreed upon silently, years before, when she'd made one tentative move to reciprocate. Bowers had refused, and subsequent offers were not forthcoming. It is better this way, she thinks as her hands trace downward to find the spot that will give the older woman the release she needs to sleep, hopefully a deep, dreamless sleep. The barrier remains, if only slightly translucent, between them. Bowers does not allow herself to feel need, not when it comes to Van Schuyler. She does not want to become that vulnerable.

She tells herself it is the money. Van Schuyler had named her sole beneficiary to her fortune long before that first time together, and did not tell her until long afterwards. This knowledge gives Van Schuyler the upper hand. It gives her the control, and she revels in taunting her girl (as she so often refers to Bowers) to see which god she serves more: pride or greed.

Bowers knows it is neither pride nor greed that keeps her here, though she does everything to tell herself otherwise. Her hand is stroking gently, rhythmically. It does not take long to please her mistress, and the tensing of the soft body in her arms comes quickly, followed by a slumping relaxation and contented sigh.

She lies there for a while, the scents of ointment and rose water and burnt herbs mixing with that distinctive scent that only female flesh can produce, that intoxicating essence of sex and femininity and power that Mrs. Van Schuyler seems to breathe effortlessly into the atmosphere.

Bowers rocks the older woman slowly, chastising herself all the while for sentimentality. She is her employer, nothing more. She is a foul old woman with a sadistic streak and an avaricious personality.

That's all she is.

Mrs. Van Schuyler has drifted off, and Miss Bowers whispers softly into her ear. "Come on, old girl. Let's get you off to bed." She pulls away, making sure her charge is steady on the chaise, and hurries into her clothes again. Then she rouses the old woman, and hustles her off to bed.

The End  



End file.
